Choosy mice do NOT choose Jif

There's a mouse in our house. In fact, there were way more mice than that, but we've killed the others.  Now there's just one mouse left.

The choosy mouse.

This is not the choosy mouse - this was a sanctioned mouse living in our house over the summer

This mouse will not take our bait.  He is smarter than the traps we've set, and we've set multiple different types of traps.  His friends liked our organic, all-natural peanut butter, but he wasn't biting, so we switched to Jiff, figuring that surely choosing mice would chose Jif.

He turned his pointy little nose up in the air when he saw our Jif trap.

"Pssshaw," he said, with a wave of his hand. "I am far too choosy for peanut butter."  And then went about his business scurrying back and forth on the board above our bed, keeping me awake at night, making nests and pooping in our insulation.

Warning: Please do not continue reading if you are at all squeamish, currently eating a meal, or don't like to hear about dead animals.

Last night was the last straw.  The mouse was making enough noise that I had dreams that squirrels and Boxer dogs were in our attic, and that a squirrel dropped into our bedroom and our cat helped me catch it with my bare hands. (No we do not have a cat.)  It sounded like the mouse was taking a baseball bat to the boards of our attic.  It was so loud.  And right above our master bed.  The noise was so obnoxious that around 12:30 a.m. DH went to sleep in the spare bedroom.  I then spent the night on the couch.  How in the world did the woman of the relationship end up on the couch!?! I hate sleeping on couches and thus didn't really get any sleep.  Murph was also annoyed by the noise and kept letting out low "woofs" every now and then.  Not helpful, Murph.

So today the action that we needed to take was clear - set more traps.  We prepped the traps with cheese (instead of peanut butter, see above) and then made a fun box with holes in it for the mice to play in.  If all goes well, they choosy mouse would go into the mouse playhouse, crawl along the wall of the box to the trap, and meet it's stupid little demise.

I being the brave one in the house (or, at they very least the one not terribly bothered by dead mice) popped my head up into the attic with a flashlight and quickly exclaimed with glee, "We got a mouse!!"

YES! Perhaps it was the choosy mouse!!!

So I donned a rubber glove and after arguing with DH about my wish to use our kitchen tongs to extract the mouse and trap (yes, I understand that we sometimes use those for food but we can wash it - I lost that battle) I went back up into the attic to get the mouse.

"There's a lot of poop around the mouse," I said.

"Well he probably pooped himself when he died," was DH's response.

"I don't know," I countered, "There's a lot of poop."

Upon closer inspection I discovered that the poop was not from the dead mouse but instead from the other cannibal mice that were feasting on him.  The choosy mouse is a cannibal.  I could see internal mouse organs and there were pieces of mouse all around him.

But suddenly the solution was crystal clear!

All we need to do to catch the choosy mouse is to bait a trap with a dead body of his own kind!!!

However, first we're going to see how things go with the mozzarella and the mouse playhouse.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we don't have to implement what I will now refer to as "Plan C."

I'll keep you posted.